Rashid Darden

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“Sorority Sisters” is here whether you like it or not

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This summer, Greekdom was in an uproar over the reality show “Sorority Sisters” that was threatening to cross over into the pantheon of ratchet reality shows.  It seemed as though Mona Scott Young was attached to the project at that time.  Petitions were circulated asking, begging, and pleading VH1 to not move forward with this.

But it’s here, so get ready.  According to VH1, Mona isn’t even producing this, so I don’t know.

I watch a lot of television.  Like, a lot.  So I’m not going to boycott this particular show when I could be boycotting a whole lot of other ones before it. I’ll watch it and decide if I want to watch a second episode.  But I’ve watched every other Greek-related show out there, so why not this one, too?

Let me know what you think when you’ve seen it.

“To Destroy All Prejudices”

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When I created Notable Alphas, it was simply an experiment.  I wanted to know whether there was enough positive news about members and chapters of Alpha Phi Alpha to provide a steady flow of content on an independent website, Facebook page, Twitter, and Tumblr.  In the past year, I’ve listened to the feedback of Brothers in my circle.  There are far fewer videos of new member presentations and less news from Capitol Hill.  There are more stories about Brothers in entertainment and in social justice.  From time to time, I will also provide an editorial or profile that has more of “me” in it—I am a novelist first, and I feel more comfortable in feature writing than hard news.

This will be a “me” piece.

My time as an Alpha has not been without incident.  There have been extremely high peaks and there have been valleys from which I thought I would not recover.  There has been the realization that my own leadership style is better suited for a much smaller organization, therefore ending my personal ambitions; yet I was able to make significant contributions as a national committee chairman.

In recent years, I have realized that in addition to being a creative person, I am an introvert.  Introverts often perform well independently, in solitude.  I have, in earnest, reached out to members of other Greek letter organizations to see whether the talents of introverts are being properly utilized on the micro and macro levels.  The jury is still out.

For me, Notable Alphas is the best possible way for me to give back to brothers who have given so much to me.  Outside of the chapters, the districts, the regions, the conventions, there have been great men, influential men in my life who I am honored to have considered friends.  I am not talking about the Martin Luther Kings and Marion Barrys of Alpha.  I mean the roommates, the brothers I met serendipitously at conferences, the friends I made back in the days of BlackPlanet, GreekChat, and MegaGreek.

As I said on Founders Day in 2009:

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When Alpha Phi Alpha was founded, an entirely new type of organization was born.  It was social, yes, in that fellowship was a very important part of the development of its members.  And it was surely considered a general fraternity which didn’t restrict membership purely on major or class standing.  Nor was it solely a service fraternity like my beloved Alpha Phi Omega.  No, this organization was, from the very beginning, one devoted to social justice even more than fellowship, philanthropy, and academic achievement.

In the preamble to the fraternity’s constitution, there is an admonition to “destroy all prejudices.”  For my entire time as an Alpha, I have strived to embody that particular charge.  I have never hidden my sexual orientation from the brotherhood, not just because I knew doing so would kill my spirit, but because I knew that at some point in the future, I would be looked to by a younger brother as a role model.  I had to be me, in spite of the repercussions, so that the road would be easier for others.

There were repercussions.  I am still here.

I have tried to be a voice for religious minorities in the fraternity as well.  I have tried to be a voice for the artists who are often drowned out in rooms full of doctors, lawyers, and businessmen.  And even though I am grad-made and proud, I have spoken up for college brothers–even when there were none within earshot.

I have always believed that we needed to destroy our own prejudices before we can dare work on destroying the world’s.  But now I fear that I have waited too long—the prejudices of the world are destroying us.

The time for introspection has passed.  The time has now come for action.

Alpha is what it is.  We were good.  What we used to be worked.  Though we are still what we once were, it is now time to be who we should be.

We have to be actively engaged in the liberation of our people from a system which is literally murdering us.  We cannot show up just for the protests and the photo opportunities.  We have to take deliberate actions as a body of hundreds of thousands of active and inactive members.

We have to dismantle white supremacy.  We need to arm ourselves with the many works—scholarly and accessible—that will train our members how to think critically about what is happening to us, from mass incarceration to academic inequities.

We have to expose white privilege everyplace that it lives.

We have to understand that mentoring black boys won’t prevent them from getting shot by racist police officers.

We have to cast off the years of black respectability politics that inform our current paradigm and investigate entirely different ways of service and advocacy.

We have to be feminists.  We have to be leaders in the true equality of womanhood while recognizing that they, too, exist in a system which was not designed for their protection.  We must fully stand up against our own male privilege and misogyny.  We need to stop raping women.  We need to believe women who say they are raped.  We need to stop being bystanders to behaviors which harm women and threaten their equality.

We have to end hazing.

We have to end brutality.

We have to turn up.

We have to regenerate.

We have to be so much more to so many more people so that we can simply live.

The battle is not the same as it was in 1906.

Trayvon Martin’s killer walks free.

Mike Brown’s killer walks free.

Eric Garner’s killer walks free.

Hell has finally frozen over, Brothers.  For our people, for our future, for the world:  it’s time to fight on the ice.

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Brother Rashid Darden is a novelist.  This editorial is not sponsored by any entity and was not reviewed or endorsed by Alpha Phi Alpha.

 

 

Ferguson, Social Media, and Good White Folks

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It seems as though we are entering into a new era of the civil rights movement and the onus is on white people to put their heads into the game.

There are many other writers who are versed in social justice generally and Ferguson specifically that can address the details of what’s going on globally.  As for me, I just want to focus on what I’m observing in my own social media sphere.

I see people of color who are hurting.  I am hurting.  We’ve had enough.  We are tired of being the only people speaking out when another black person gets killed at the hands of the police, or at the hands of cowards who think they are the police.

We’re tired of being the go-to people when good white folks need to get their thoughts organized.  But thankfully, good white folks are finally getting it!  This time, things have been different for me.  I haven’t been sent a lot of personal messages on what white people should do, or say, or how they should act, or where they should volunteer or donate.

Now I see my white friends (my real white friends, not the ones I happen to be connected to) actually engaging their own circles.  They are speaking out first on these injustices.  They are being intentional in their outreach to each other.  They are acknowledging their whiteness and the privilege it entails.

In fact, #WhitePrivilegeWednesday arose as a means of white folks talking to each other about their privilege.  It’s a day I get to be silent (if I choose) and let white people talk it out themselves.  I can only do so much as a magical negro patient black man person, but white folks can actually listen to each other, challenge each other, and somehow come to an understanding on the complex issues we’re facing.

I am proud of Good White Folks.  They are also fighting against the fallacy of “black on black violence” and other distracting debates.

And you know what?

It’s all because they learned how to Google the same shit I Googled when I needed to learn more about these things myself.  They follow the same blogs I do, read the same books I have, and otherwise educated themselves.  They don’t rely solely on my worldview.  However, they do give me the space to be pissed, to cuss, and to say “Fuck white people” without them chiming in with “Not all white people.”

There is still a lot of work to be done, though.  Good White Folks still have to educate the white folks who call us “animals” and “savages” when we riot and loot.  They have to educate the white folks who believe in the myth of the bootstraps.  They have so much work to do, but they can do it.

But I’ll tell you one thing…it took me years to get to the point where I am only connected to white people who are committed to dismantling white supremacy.

And…

Trust…

I know a-plenty of black folks who rely on white supremacy to build their own personal wealth.  I mean, I did go to Georgetown.  As my mom told me at a young age, when the revolution comes, some black folks are gonna have to go, too.

A Micro-Renaissance

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I feel as though I haven’t written in months.  I probably haven’t.  That will change.

The things in Ferguson have been weighing heavily on my mind, as has the death of my fraternity brother Marion Barry.

But that was yesterday.

It’s time to come back.

Thank you to the women in this picture, my sister-authors, for helping me bounce back.  And you ain’t even know it.

More to come.

Our Love for Brother Marion Barry is Complicated

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Brother Rashid Darden, Editor of Notable Alphas, pays tribute to Brother Marion Barry.

” I don’t want normal, and easy, and simple. I want. . .I want painful, difficult, devastating, life-changing, extraordinary love. Don’t you want that, too?”  –Olivia Pope, Scandal

And so did the citizens of the District of Columbia want a love just as complicated.  A love that had to be explained to the rest of America; to the transplants and transients who arrived here with their carpetbags; and to the racists in Congress who–some to this day–don’t believe in the ability of Washingtonians to govern themselves.

This was our Brother Marion Barry (Beta Xi – LeMoyne-Owen College), who we loved complicatedly, unrelentingly, from the depths of our souls to the marble stairs of the District Building.

Much will be said about Brother Barry’s life of contradictions, from his personal troubles to his investments in the youth and the elderly; from his romantic commitments and liaisons to his uncensored language in council meetings.  Those wanting more depth on those topics may read many tributes sure to come.  Some will be the typical Democratic, tone deaf, “We were close friends” tributes rife with the illusion of proximity.  Others will be fair and balanced, scholarly pieces.

But today, I simply mourn him as my Brother and as a native Washingtonian.

When I was in the fifth grade, sometime during 1989 or 1990, I was somehow chosen to shadow Mr. Peter Parham, DC’s Director of Human Services and a member of Marion Barry’s cabinet.  Several of us were selected to go to his office, but before I knew it, I was spirited away from the other kids, who were shadowing office workers, and I found myself in a car with Mr. Parham, on my way to a cabinet meeting.

It all happened so fast.  Before I knew it, I was shaking hands with a bunch of cabinet members and ultimately, Marion Barry himself.  He was larger than life in personality, just as he seemed on television, yet someone accessible to me, like an uncle or neighbor.  Like many of my family, he had that southern twang in his voice, signifying that he, too, had migrated here from warmer places.  It was a great moment for me.

The major focus of this meeting was the drug trade.  Police representatives brought in all these products that the drug traffickers were using to smuggle drugs into the city:  soda cans, bottles of cleaning products, anything you can imagine. I remember, once I got home, feeling a deep sense of irony that the focus of the cabinet meeting was about drugs.  I cannot recall if my visit was before or after his arrest, but the suspicion of his drug use was rampant, even among fifth grade playground gossip.

That’s what life was like in DC in the 80s and 90s when you loved Mayor Marion Barry.  You knew, but you didn’t care.  You cared, but you didn’t know.  You loved him anyway, because he definitely loved you.  He was a civil rights leader who had assumed the next logical level of responsibility to the people.  So few did.  So few could.

I would see Brother Barry several more times as a child.  He was a special guest at the annual Cherry Blossom poster contest awards (hosted by Effi Barry, his now-deceased ex-wife).  He was a special guest speaker at my graduation, as he was practically everyone’s.  We all know his speech:  “Education is like Coca-Cola–it’s the real thing.”

But the damage of his addiction had been done.  Even though he returned to the Mayor’s office, and subsequently city council, people in my generation were tired of being the laughing stock of the nation.  We loved him, but it was hard to explain him.  We loved him, but we needed more.  We needed different.  We were tired of the complicated love, the dangerous love.  This love had transformed us, but it was time to let go.

Brother Marion Barry was still on the scene, though.  Just because I had emotionally let go of my attachment to the “Mayor for Life” doesn’t mean he had let go of me, DC, and the people who lived here.  He remained steadfast in his career as a politician, but also ensured that his own story was preserved and told.  Just this year, he published his autobiography.  A few years ago, he cooperated with the production of a documentary about his life.  (Links below.)

I am also personally proud that he was, for a period, affiliated with my chapter of initiation.  Mu Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha in Washington, DC was always proud to include him as one of their most notable members.

Today, we are sad.  As Washingtonians.  As DC residents.  As Brothers of Alpha.  His leadership changed my life.  His life changed my leadership.  He was my mayor.  He was my black brother.  He was my fraternity brother.  My love for Brother Barry hurt.  It was extraordinary.  It changed me.

And I am grateful that it was all of those things.

Rest in power, Brother Barry.

The Nine Lives of Marion Barry (Documentary DVD)

The Nine Lives of Marion Barry (Amazon Video on Demand)

Mayor for Life: The Incredible Story of Marion Barry, Jr.